Peter Lanzani, star of some of the greatest films and series to come out of Argentina of late – “Argentina, 1985,” “El Angel,” “The Clan,” “4X4,” “Un Gallo Para Esculapio” – is set to make his directorial debut, helming a biopic of Argentine ‘80s rock icon Luca Prodan. Lanzani will also play Prodan.
Two other movers and shakers on Argentina’s film-TV scene, Argentina’s Armando Bo, an Academy Award winner for the screenplay of Alejandro González Inárritu’s “Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance,” and Luis Ortega, the multi-awarded director of “Lulu” and “El Angel,” will serve as executive producers.
The bio will take in the early years of Prodán, an extraordinary figure on Argentina’s ‘80s rock scene, educated like British king Charles III at Scotland’s Gordonstoun boarding school, a Virgin music exec in London and founder in Argentina of Sumo, whose combination of Joy Division-style rock, post-punk funk and reggae-ska took Buenos Aires youth by storm.
Highly cultured, though a gentleman with flashes of punkish aggro on stage, even by the time that Prodán hit Argentina in 1981 he had developed two addictions: Gin and heroine. The combination left him dead in 1987 at the age of 34.
Lanzaniwill co-direct the film withMartín Fisner, an assistant DP on “El Marginal.” Rodolfo Palacios (“El Angel,” “El Jockey”),Sergio Olguín (“El Angel,” “The Fragility of Bodies”),Lanzani and Fisner are writing the screenplay.
The big question is what through line they will drive between ‘70s class-bound, punk-energized Britain and an Argentina of the early ‘80s emerging from a bloody dictatorship.
The biopic is set up at Bo’s Rebolución, behind his 2012 Sundance hit, “The Last Elvis,” and his second feature as a director, “Animal,” and Bo’s about Entertainment, founded in 2020 to focus on high quality entertainment for broad audiences such as “El Presidente” Season 2, for Prime Video.
Ortega will produce out of El Despacho, launched in 2020 in Buenos Aires by Ortega, Esteban Perroud and Palacios to develop original ideas, independent formats and big scale work, whose auteur work stands out in the international market.
Its first project, directed by Ortega, “The Jockey,” starring “Money Heist’s” Úrsula Corberóand Nahuel Pérez Biscayart (“120 BPM”), is now in post-production.
